Liverpool v Chelsea: former manager Rafael Benítez yearns for more than a day return trip to his beloved Anfield

Rafa Benítez will be in the blue corner. But he would love to be back in the
red. When the Kop chant his name at Anfield on Sunday he will need to decide
what to do with his hands. Wave all day to his Liverpool loyalists or strap
his arms to his sides to avoid a conflict of interest?

We love you: former Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez is certain to get a warm welcome from the KopPhoto: GETTY IMAGES

Chelsea’s interim manager will swivel his gaze to the crowd and see declarations of love. The banners will not be blue.

Benítez will become the first Premier League manager to be jeered by his own team’s supporters and cheered by the opposition’s. But he would be kidding himself if he thought all this was leading up to a second Anfield reign.

Benítez would not bite at Chelsea’s Cobham training ground on a straight question about whether he chased the job now occupied by Brendan Rodgers when Kenny Dalglish was fired last summer.

One account had him pitching for his old post with all the energy his private PR machine could muster: “That’s something I will not talk about because I don’t want any misunderstanding,” Benítez said before Chelsea set off to Merseyside.

With his nightwatchman shift at Chelsea nearly up, Benítez is considering his options. Liverpool are probably not on that list. Seasoned Anfield watchers noted the disinclination of Fenway Sports Group, Liverpool’s owners, to interview him after Dalglish was sacked.

Benítez was unemployed at the time and still based on the Wirral, where his wife and daughters live. The belief is that Benítez was rejected as a possible successor partly as a result of soundings inside the club.

Liverpool’s leader for six years from 2004-2010, Benítez took them to two Champions League finals, winning one, and came within two points of capturing the club’s first league title since 1990 with the 2008-2009 side, that featured the marvellous raptor skills of Fernando Torres, who returns to Anfield tomorrow in Chelsea blue.

The great Istanbul fightback of 2005, when Liverpool were 3-0 down at half-time to AC Milan in the Champions League final, guaranteed Benítez a permanent place in Liverpool folklore, despite the regression and tensions with senior players at the end of his six years.

Though he has not lobbied directly for a second shot at the Liverpool position, Benítez’s musings on his love for the city and the roots laid down by his family conform to a pattern.

“I will be going back home because Liverpool is where my family live now,” he told reporters after Chelsea’s 3-0 win against Fulham on Wednesday. “I was there for six years, I have very good memories so I cannot hide that I will be really pleased to go back to see a lot of friends.”

Explaining his reluctance to relocate his family to Milan during his short time as Inter manager, Benítez said in December:

“When you have children, 10 and 14, they have their friends around and have been there for eight years so it is difficult to move the family and you have to do something for them. I have to move around on my own and then find a way to be there for Christmas dinner or whatever.”

Then, in an interview with Marca this month, he offered his most explicit come-on to Liverpool’s second raft of American owners: “I will return to Liverpool one day almost certainly, I just don’t know when. My daughters and wife are still living there.”

The Spanish journalist who conducted that interview has told other reporters he is certain Benítez meant Liverpool the club, rather than the city.

In his torrid early weeks at Stamford Bridge, Benítez developed a hankering for the Real Madrid job, post-Jose Mourinho. Since then he appears to have redirected his yearnings towards Liverpool, more as a long-term hope than a short-term strategy. Rodgers is highly unlikely to be discarded this summer after a mostly encouraging first campaign.

The last time Benítez went back to a former club was Tenerife, with Valencia. “A goal from [Pablo] Aimar, outside the box, top corner. We won 1-0,” he says. “That one was good. We were in the race for the title. Great goal.”

Despite granting several interviews recently, and discussing Liverpool at length, Benítez tried to bring the shutters down on his relationship with their supporters. “As you know I try to concentrate on the games. I don’t pay too much attention to what is going on in the stands,” he said, unconvincingly.

Why stop emoting about Liverpool two days before the game?

“No. I was clear. My home is there. My family is there. I cannot change the past,” he said. “I’m really proud, the rivalry and all these things ... I can understand now, but it’s very clear: my commitment is with Chelsea, we have to concentrate on games, and I will use common sense and try to get three points. Afterwards, I will wish the best to Liverpool Football Club.

“I have very good friends in Extramadura, Tenerife, Valencia, Madrid, because I was successful in these teams and these cities. Valencia was three years, Liverpool six, so more time there, more friends, more people, more good memories. That’s it. If you can be successful with any team, the fans will appreciate you for that.”

Benítez has been to Anfield only once, he says, since departing after the team’s seventh-place finish in May 2010, for a Hillsborough Memorial service. His wife, Montse, is a prominent supporter of the Hillsborough campaign and Benítez’s own backing for the cause is another guarantee of his status.

Invited to agree that Chelsea’s trip to the North-West will be emotionally fraught, he shrugs and says: “It is what it is.”

His problem is that, in the event of Rodgers failing, he would need to persuade John W Henry and the other Fenway moguls that his return would not bring political complications, which would be a hard claim to prove.

But for a man who improved his English by reading Beatles lyrics, one song stands out this weekend. Love Me Do.